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Would you like WorkChoices with that? Tony Abbott Supersizing exploitation

John Howard’s failed WorkChoices plan was just the warm up. Tony Abbott’s WorkChoices (inspired by Gina ‘Less Than $2 A Day’ Rinehart) will turn Australia into a Medieval Fiefdom controlled by a handful of billionaires and their marionettes in parliament doing their bidding.

The media are pushing the idea that the biggest threat to Australian millionaires comes from workers wanting flexible hours, perhaps for caring for elderly or disabled relatives or children, they claim this is in inflexible.

The ALP has plans to make it easier for employees to seek flexible working hours. Flexibility would apply to those workers who are over 55, with school age children, disability or carer duties, victim of domestic violence or new parents. (source: here)

As sure as night follows day, the millionaires and billionaires have launched a campaign to demonise “flexibility”.

Labor’s IR law hurts business ‘battlers’: CEO
Nicola Mills confesses she gets a little “nervous” when the federal government starts fiddling with Fair Work legislation. The chief executive of Pacific Retail Management, which runs restaurant chains including Go Sushi and Kick Juice, says the proposed changes to expand the rights of parents to request flexible hours and restrict roster changes put more pressure on small businesses by imposing too much bureaucracy.

Pacific Retail, with a turnover of more than $9 million is the conservatives idea of a battler. All those workers with an Alzheimer parent to look after and two kids in school struggling on minimum wage in an office someplace between midnight and dawn on a saturday night without the chance of penalty rates at (for example) one of Pacific Retails businesses probably didn’t realise that $9 million was the New Battler.

But for all you workers of Australia who are battling on much less than $9M, Tony ‘Superman’ Abbott is putting on his cape, his undies over his tights and will save you.

Tony Abbott says “the real friends of the workers of this country are on this side [Opposition] of the Parliament.” (source: here)

In the past Tony Abbott has said “The one thing that the Australian workers will find is that I am their best friend. What I want to see is higher wages and more jobs. That’s what I was like when I was the workplace relations minister.” (source: here)

Tony Abbott was also part of a Liberal government that inflicted WorkChoices on the nation. Slave wages and no rights is Tony Abbott’s idea of being a “best friend”. Although, considering he was Peter Slipper’s best friend, and was best man at his wedding, and has since tried to force him out of his job and into prison, perhaps Tony Abbott doesn’t realise what being a Friend means.

However, the ALP will fight for all Australians, not just a handful of multi-millionaire battlers.

But the problem is that there is only one side of Australian politics that wants to be positive about workplace relations.

Whenever we talk about workplace relations, someone in the central bunker of Liberal headquarters presses the alarm button and says: ‘Quick; we’d better get out and bash unions. We’d better disguise the fact that we do not have a policy for Australian workplaces.’

Even better, someone in Liberal Party headquarters presses the button and says: ‘Quick, let’s rake over something from 20 years ago as a revenge against our Prime Minister.’ At least we talk about workplace relations.

I will tell you about Liberal flexibility—because they will not. Under Liberals, it is more flexible to sack someone. It is more flexible to cut their pay. It is more flexible, but they do not have job security.

Under Labor, our definition of flexibility is productivity; it is modern families getting a decent go in the workplace.

I love it when the Leader of the Opposition reminds everyone, as he did today, that he is the worker’s best friend. With friends like him, you don’t need enemies!…

You might not like the truth over there [Opposition], but you should have it.

Finally, when we talk about prosperity and threats to it, I love a good Leader of the Opposition quote. Talking about Work Choices, Mr Abbott said:

The Howard government’s industrial legislation, it was good for wages, it was good for jobs and it was good for workers. And let’s never forget that.

I will tell you one thing: we’ll never forget about it, but I don’t agree with the rest of that quote.

14 Comments to “Would you like WorkChoices with that? Tony Abbott Supersizing exploitation”

Actually I never watch QT but I do prefer the word mendacious to describe the garbage which flows from the mouths of Tony Abbott & his ilk. This wonderful word has many more meanings than just untruthful & misleading such as deceitful, deceptive, dishonest, duplicitous, fallacious, false, fraudulent, insincere, lying, perfidious, perjured, untrue, which can aptly characterise the LNP. It also means the lying is persistent. Mendacious is a word I have often used to describe such people. Disingenuous would be another good word for that bunch of deceitful persons. 🙂

I do understand that member of Parlaiment cant call each other out on untruths in words which are clear(- I frequently watch question time myself)-my point was meant for the wider political audience- who don’t watch- have just seconds to thnink about things and don’t understand what thre word mendacious means- and will then simply put the whole thing into the ‘two hard’ basket.
Agree wholeheartedly with Joy Cooper’s comments.

In reality Abbott is the best friend the billionaires ever had. More obliging than even Howard was. Though you can be sure they hold him in a similar contempt to the multitudes of wage slaves. That is, as a means to their (billionaires’) ends.

Abbott isn’t all that smart. But he knows the score, and his role within the ‘system’: Kiss up, Kick down. He’ll continue kissing their silver butts .. while parading around in Hi Vis vests to make it look like he’s ‘at one’ with the workers, whose butts he will kick the hell out of given the first chance.

Thanks for this TL. The sort of journalism we need more of in this troubled land.

The picture of the zombie was created by someone else, Turn Left added the text, but I believe that copyright doesn’t apply if it is use for satire. So go for it, please no attribution, in case this doesn’t count as satire. : )
–99– for Turn Left

If we believe Mr Abbott when he has told us on National Television that he’ doesn’t always tell the truth’ we are idiots.This is ONE TIME when we should BELIEVE HIM>

By the way ‘work choices is dead, it buried’ sure the name ‘Work Choices’ is gone BUT the concept is till there. Look at his recent push to have fraudulent unionists jailed for 5 years- surely any business owner, director or executive should be included?

It makes me weep inside when lower-income people believe all the mendacious crap issuing from Tony Abbott & his cohort. They are like lambs being led to slaughter by the bellwether News Ltd aided by shock jocks such as Bolt, Jones & Hadley, all squillionaires who have absolutely nothing in common with such people. If truth be known they probably despise them as not being “their people”. They are now so well indoctrinated they will not believe the truth even if they see it with their own eyes. It is so sad & frustrating. John Howard conned them & they are still under his malevolent spell.